Star Wars: The Force Awakens Reviews (SPOILER-FREE THREAD)
- Thread starter Tom Hendricks
- Start date
I thought there enough differences that I didn't mind the similarities to ANH. Abrams also admitted the similarities to ANH were intentional, they did it because they wanted to use a familiar story to ease people back into the story. I would have been a lot more upset if he had tried to insist it was all a completely original story.
I thought it worked just fine as its own story. What's so interesting to me is that the bits with Han Solo could almost (emphasis on almost) be excised or reduced and there would still be a narrative that I could follow. Which, honestly, I liked that it felt like it's own story, even if the larger framework was ANH. The characters were good enough to carry it through.
Just like A New Hope.
AlmostJust like A New Hope.
You phrase that like a refutation, but you're saying the same thing as I am.
Also, if you quote a person's name and not just their words, they get notified about it. Which would be cool.
It bothered me a lot. If you're really going to try and rip off ANH, why another scavenger on a desert planet? At least make it, I dunno like a planet full of smoking industrial factories, like an industrial Coruscant or something. There, I've improved it already. It was just way too similar, and just displayed a lack of imagination and creativity, which is essential to a Star Wars movie in my opinion. If the next one is a rerun of ESB I'm done with this series of movies.
I agree.
I watched episode 1 through 6 before I went to TFA and was dissapointed by the similarities
I watched episode 1 through 6 before I went to TFA and was dissapointed by the similarities
Lack of originality aside, the problem with Starkiller base for me is that it literally comes out of nowhere half way through the movie. Even when RotJ reused the concept it was organically worked into the plot. It's existence is spelled out in the opening crawl and it's shown in the very first shot of the movie. In TFA it's just suddenly *there*. Because reasons!
This is a bit of a recurring problem I have with JJA's storytelling in that he likes to introduce elements that seem exciting or mysterious but seems to be unwilling or unable to fully think it though. This to me feels like he either doesn't respect the audience's intelligence or that he lacks the discipline to put the work in. As bad a character writer as Lucas is, he worked his arse off on that first script, sweating every detail of the story so then when it comes to it, he didn't need to explain everything about this world he'd created because it was mostly self evident. It just worked.
I don't know exactly at what point in the production the SKB concept was floated, but if I had to theorise I'd say it has the distinct odour of a "we need to up the stakes in the third act!" note. Think about it for a second. The *only* reason SKB is there is to make the final battle more spectacular and to instil a false sense of urgency with a literal ticking clock. Were we given any reason to care about the Republic capital before it was vaporised? It barely got a mention to the point where most people didn't catch the name and understandably assumed that it was Coruscant. There's a reason why that mission briefing was just a bunch or people talking fast and making crap up as they went along, because that's exactly what the writers were doing. This is what happens when you fumble the narrative and end up with what I like to call "an exposition dept".
You could have told essentially the same story if Rey had been held aboard the Finalizer, you just wouldn't have Poe & the Resistance air battle. Indeed given that originally Poe was supposed to die on Jakku I suspect that's exactly how it originally went. Having Finn need to go back to the ship we saw him desert from to rescue Rey is a much more logical end to his arc in this movie than essentially saying "oh by the way, I used to clean the toilets in that base nobody mentioned until just now."
This is a bit of a recurring problem I have with JJA's storytelling in that he likes to introduce elements that seem exciting or mysterious but seems to be unwilling or unable to fully think it though. This to me feels like he either doesn't respect the audience's intelligence or that he lacks the discipline to put the work in. As bad a character writer as Lucas is, he worked his arse off on that first script, sweating every detail of the story so then when it comes to it, he didn't need to explain everything about this world he'd created because it was mostly self evident. It just worked.
I don't know exactly at what point in the production the SKB concept was floated, but if I had to theorise I'd say it has the distinct odour of a "we need to up the stakes in the third act!" note. Think about it for a second. The *only* reason SKB is there is to make the final battle more spectacular and to instil a false sense of urgency with a literal ticking clock. Were we given any reason to care about the Republic capital before it was vaporised? It barely got a mention to the point where most people didn't catch the name and understandably assumed that it was Coruscant. There's a reason why that mission briefing was just a bunch or people talking fast and making crap up as they went along, because that's exactly what the writers were doing. This is what happens when you fumble the narrative and end up with what I like to call "an exposition dept".
You could have told essentially the same story if Rey had been held aboard the Finalizer, you just wouldn't have Poe & the Resistance air battle. Indeed given that originally Poe was supposed to die on Jakku I suspect that's exactly how it originally went. Having Finn need to go back to the ship we saw him desert from to rescue Rey is a much more logical end to his arc in this movie than essentially saying "oh by the way, I used to clean the toilets in that base nobody mentioned until just now."
Rey and Finn could have escaped in a ship (maybe even Kylo's shuttle) and crashed, even as Resistance fighters tear the finalizer apart, landing on the snowy planet below.
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